[A]cceptance by illegal aliens of jobs on substandard terms as to wages and working conditions can seriously depress wage scales and working conditions of citizens and legally admitted aliens.

DeCanas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351, 356-57 (1976)

Howard W. Foster

Howard Foster

Howard Foster has been practicing law for more than two decades and RICO Law for the last 14 years. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and Boston University Law School.  He has litigated many civil RICO cases in federal courts throughout the nation and in the U.S. Supreme Court.   In 2001, Commercial Cleaning Services, LLC v. Colin Service Systems, Inc., established the right of businesses to sue their rivals who compete unfairly, by employing illegal immigrants to cut labor costs. That decision was highlighted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the National Law Journal and has been cited in numerous law review articles and cases for its implications for private enforcement of the immigration laws. The following year, he won the landmark decision in Mendoza v. Zirkle Fruit Co., which established the right of workers in firms which use illegal labor to sue under RICO for wage depression. The case went on to be certified as a class action on behalf of the legal workers of Zirkle Fruit Co., enabling wage depression cases to be brought on a firm-wide scale.

In 2006 Howard argued Mohawk Industries v. Williams in the U.S. Supreme Court and persuaded the Justices, with the help of the Department of Justice, which intervened on behalf of the legal workers, to reject the narrow interpretation of association-in-fact enterprise, which Mohawk Industries had sought. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has now issued three opinions in favor of the legal workers in the case, the most recent one on class certification. Recently the case sttled for $18 million, a record for this type of injury.

Howard is lead counsel in other wage depression cases, highlighted in our Current Cases Section. He also litigates civil RICO cases on behalf of individuals and businesses which have been defrauded and otherwise victimized by the many forms of racketeering activity that plague the economy.

He writes frequently on legal issues for The Huffington Post and teaches civil RICO at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Kent) Law School in Chicago.